In the field of networking topology, channel hopping strategies have been employed to improve reliability for low power and lossy networks (LLN)s. Namely, time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) is where time is divided into several timeslots. These timeslots are grouped into one or more slot frames with each slot frame continuously repeating over time.
Generally, in centralized resource and schedule management schemes, all LLN devices report their TSCH schedule to the central controller of the network. The central controller calculates the optimal track, otherwise known as a path, from source to the destination and notifies LLN devices on the track to reserve resources. However, this may cause high traffic load around the central controller when the size of the network grows due to large amounts of information contained in the LLN device's periodic TSCH report. Accordingly, track reservation requests may not be delivered to the central controller promptly. Moreover, the track reservation request may not be promptly processed.
Separately, conventional routing protocols, e.g., IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), are inefficient to find the shortest path in IETF IPv6 over the TSCH mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH) networks. While the default routing protocol RPL may certainly find a path between a source and a destination along a Destination Oriented Direct Acyclic Graph (DODAG) via backbone routers (BRs), this path may cause transmission delays. Meanwhile, channels of the BRs may become saturated. Moreover, the RPLs may also impair the benefit of a track that is employed for reducing the delay of point-to-point traffic (P2P). That is, when the network grows, these protocols, e.g., P2P-RPLs, may suffer from one or more problems. These may include high energy consumption at the source LLN device, large delay and overhead to build a DODAG, and a Track not being guaranteed for reservation along the found path
Further, existing protocols fail to support decentralized track reservation in 6TiSCH networks. That is, even if the source LLN device may find a well-performed, e.g., the shortest, path to the destination, no decentralized procedures exist to support track reservation in a 6TiSCH.